The Detroit Electric Scheme (39 page)

A tear slipped down her cheek. “When John died—was killed—I didn't know what to do. I bought a bottle from a pharmacy downtown, but
the pharmacist grilled me like I was a derelict. I was sure the pharmacy on Hastings would sell it to me, but the man refused. He said I had to go see Vito Adamo. You know the rest.” She looked away and hugged herself.

“Elizabeth, I don't know what to say. None of this would have happened without me.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you know. What I did.”

She took a long pull on the cigarette and swallowed the smoke before blowing it up toward the heavy clouds. “What did you do?”

“You know.”

Her head tilted a little to the side, and her glittering green eyes met mine, a challenge behind them.

I turned and stared out at the skeletal trees in the Humes' backyard. “I knew you didn't want to . . .” I trailed off, knowing that was wrong. I started again. “I forced you to . . .” That still wasn't right.

When the words appeared in my mind, I swallowed hard. For nearly a year and a half I'd been able to keep them at bay, keep them hidden away in some deep recess of my mind, while they sat there moldering, rotting, gnawing chunks from my sanity.

I took a deep breath and said the words for the first time. “I raped you.”

 

Elizabeth didn't react. She just leaned against the porch rail looking out at the gray world beyond. I turned her toward me. “I know being drunk is no excuse. And being a goddamn man isn't, either. There is no excuse. I'm so sorry. I was stupid, selfish. I'd give my life to make it right. But there's no making it right.”

Her eyes searched mine for a moment before she turned away. “It wasn't all you. I may not have been as drunk as you were, but, well . . . I was caught up in the moment, same as you.”

“No. None of this is your fault.”

“Yes it is, Will. Give me some credit. If I'd tried hard enough I could have stopped you, but I didn't want to. It's only over the last few weeks that I've realized what really happened. I couldn't live with the idea that I wanted to do that with you. I blamed it all on you. But it wasn't all your fault.” She wiped her eyes and took a quick drag on the cigarette.

“Elizabeth, you told me to stop. I didn't. It's as simple as that. You shouldn't feel guilt over something
I
did.”

She shrugged, a forlorn little shake of her shoulders. “I've got plenty to feel guilty about. What's a little more?”

Our baby would have been almost eight months old now.

I put my hands on the porch railing and leaned against it. “I wish . . . you had kept it, still married me.”

“Marry you? After that?”

“I know.” I wanted to be dead.

“Pregnant on the first try. Beginner's luck, huh?” Elizabeth spat out a laugh that sounded like a sob. For a long while she stared out at the gray nothingness of the backyard. A pair of crows began cawing at each other atop one of the old oak trees.

“Why didn't you go off somewhere?” I whispered. “Have the baby adopted? I'm not judging,” I added quickly. “Far be it from me. It just . . . it just seems like that would have been easier.”

She turned toward me, her eyes glassy, pooling with tears. “Yes. It seems that way to me now. But then . . . I don't know.” Her lower lip trembled. “After you . . . we . . . did that, I couldn't live with the shame. How would I tell my mother? What would it have done to my family?” Now her voice turned colder. “The Humes don't conduct themselves that way.” I could hear her father in the last sentence.

She looked up toward the trees, her face tight with the effort of keeping herself from crying. “It was a boy. A son. Our son.” She burst out in tears and buried her face in her hands. “I'm going to Hell. And I deserve to. I killed him. I killed our son.”

The anguish in her voice nearly brought me to my knees. I took her in my arms, and our tears mixed on the front of my suit. “You did what you thought you had to, Lizzie. You did the best you could. You always do. It's me. It was always me.”

Her body shook against mine. “I'm not able to have another baby, Will,” she sobbed. “I can't live with that.”

Her words hit me like a runaway truck. “My God, Elizabeth. I didn't know. I'm so sorry.”

We cried a while longer and then stood holding each other, joined in guilt. Our life together had always been so perfect that I thought it was destiny. But destiny can only bring people together. We were destined to meet, to fall in love, to be given a chance. I had cast aside that chance in one drunken moment, a moment that would always connect us. Our lives would be intertwined until the day we died, but rather than in joy or hope, we would be joined in sorrow and pain, sure as if we were shackled together with barbed wire.

Elizabeth stepped back and wiped her face. “In case you've wondered,” she said, “I haven't heard from Frank again.”

I nodded and lit another cigarette for each of us. We stood looking out at the backyard but not really seeing it, lost in our thoughts.

After a few minutes, she rested her elbow in the palm of her other hand, holding the cigarette up near the side of her face. “I think it's odd,” she said.

“What is?”

“Oh, nothing. That people are starting to call their parlors ‘living rooms.' What does that even mean?”

That was not what I expected. “I don't know. It is a stupid name, though.”

“I'll tell you why.” She was still looking out at the garden. “These ‘funeral parlors' springing up everywhere? Death rooms. A parlor is a death room, whether it belongs to you or a professional mourner.” She turned to me. “I'm so very tired of all this, Will. All this death. I just want it done.”

“I know, honey.” I hesitated but finally asked her a question I'd wanted to ask ever since John was murdered. “Elizabeth, you believe I'm innocent, don't you?”

“I wouldn't be talking to you if I didn't.”

“Thank you. I couldn't kill anyone. And I've caused you too much pain already. I'd rather you spend your life with another man than have you endure that. We'll never be together. I've accepted that. I just want you to know I wouldn't hurt you again. Ever.”

“I know.” She flicked her cigarette butt into the backyard and pulled the veil down over her face. “I should get back to my mother.”

I nodded.

When she reached the door, she turned back to me. “I hear you're working again.”

“Yes. I'm setting up the booth for the car show next week.”

“Good.” I saw a tentative smile behind the veil. “I'm glad.”

For four years Elizabeth had dazzled the crowds at the auto show on Society Night. Surrounded by millionaires and their wives, she turned every head in the building. I smiled to think of it. I'd never been more
proud. Of course, I hadn't understood just how lucky I was, believing it was only my due to have the most beautiful woman in the world on my arm. “Thanks, Lizzie.”

“Perhaps I'll see you there,” she said. “At the show. I was thinking of going on Society Night.”

“Really?”

“For better or worse, you got me interested in automobiles. And God knows I need something to take my mind off all of this.”

“I'll look for you.”

“Around eight?”

“That would be fantastic.”

I hadn't thought Elizabeth could ever stop hating me, and I had no illusions about the prospect of a second chance. But perhaps we could be friends. Perhaps I could help her forgive herself, repair her life, move on.

But there was no guarantee I'd still be free next week. The bag with Judge Hume's clothing, the rope, and my sheet was still out there.

Somewhere.

 

I read at least one newspaper every day and kept my eyes open for the police. I was spending fourteen hours a day on the auto show, not because there was so much work to do, but because it kept me from thinking. Disaster seemed only a moment away. It was unlikely my bag would forever remain at the river's bottom. Frank and Sapphira had disappeared off the face of the earth. My trial was looming larger every day. And I was finding it increasingly difficult to refrain from drinking. That little voice in the back of my mind kept up the pressure.

Just one. One drink won't hurt. Everybody drinks. I can control it.

Just one.

But I stood resolute. And I realized that somewhere along the line I had decided not to kill myself if I were convicted. I'd fight, and my family and friends would fight alongside me. By remaining sober, I had even regained a little self-respect. I felt better than I had in a long time.
The puffiness had disappeared from my face (from both the alcohol and the beatings), and I felt energetic and alert.

But the dead man kept tugging.

The Employers Association continued to insist the bribery was a private matter between Judge Hume and two misguided ex-employees. Mr. Sutton's men tried to bribe and threaten information out of an EAD manager with a questionable personal life. Even then he wouldn't talk.

Meanwhile, District Attorney Higgins crowed to the newspapers that his case against me was sound, and that he would “lock up the heinous murderer, William C. Anderson, Jr., for the rest of his natural-born life.”

Should I be convicted, I was hoping for the opportunity of an unnatural-born life to follow, though I didn't have a great deal of confidence in that, either.

 

Because of another show at Wayne Gardens, we had only two days for setup. We were scheduled to bring in our cars at 10:00
A.M
. on Saturday. At 8:30, I bundled up and walked to Woodward to catch a trolley to the Detroit Electric garage. The oily stench of burning coal was strong, the northerly wind driving in heavy smoke from the factories. Snowflakes seemed to turn gray before my eyes, darkening as they swirled to the ground, not quite covering the sooty clumps already there.

I glanced around as I walked. Looking for the police and Frank Van Dam had become an unconscious habit. While I waited for the trolley, I reached behind me with both hands in the small of my back and stretched, though I really just wanted the reassurance of touching the gun tucked into my belt.

Since it was a workday, the crowds had thinned out an hour ago. Only a handful of people stood with me on the curb, hands in pockets, shuffling from foot to foot. A streetcar stopped, and I wedged myself on board. When I arrived at the garage, Elwood and Joe, the men I'd considered my best friends only a few weeks before, mumbled their greetings and then ignored me. I suppose being arrested for murder is as good a test of friendship as any.

I ferried the roadster alongside the river, splashing through the slush down Jefferson to Wayne Gardens, Detroit's biggest and swankiest convention center. Three of the chasers from the garage followed me in the other vehicles. Once we were inside and the cars had been cleaned and polished to a high sheen, we pulled them into our booth, between the KRIT Motor Car Company and Overland Motor Sales. I directed the layout.

The blue roadster went behind and to the side of the green extension brougham, with the maroon coupé in back. The truck had to go behind the booth, in a small annex that had been added to the building. Space at Wayne Gardens for this show was like gold. So many companies had been turned away from the Detroit Automobile Dealers Association show that a second one, under the banner of the United Automobile Dealers Association, was setting up at the Regal Motor Company's new factory, tripling the space available. It had been filled as well.

But the real show was at Wayne Gardens. The who's who of the auto world would be displaying here, with the up-and-comers (at least in their minds) relegated to the Regal factory.

When our cars were set up, I wandered the pavilion. Ladders and scaffolding were everywhere, with hundreds of workmen swarming the walls and ceilings. Huge panels of white rose bowers adorned with artificial red roses already covered the walls of the first floor, but the second floor and ceiling had a long way to go.

I went back on Sunday and helped hang our banners and signs. All but a few of the bowers were installed. The effect was extraordinary. I felt as if I had walked into a huge rose garden, filled with the most wonderful toys on earth. Scents of leather, oil, grease, wood, and brass polish wafted through the building, comforting odors I'd always associated with my father. The rest of the booths were being completed, and I strolled through the building, taking in all the new automobiles. Shiny new cars and trucks filled both floors. I paid special attention to the other electrics: Hupp-Yeats, Waverley, Phipps-Grinnell, and Raush & Lang. Even though it was a short trip from Cleveland, Baker was nowhere to be found. That was a good sign.

We were ready when the show opened on Monday, and by Wednesday
we'd already taken more orders than we had during the entire 1910 show. It looked like my father had his work cut out with the roadster, though. We'd only sold one. Thankfully, sales of broughams and coupés more than made up for it.

I spent most of my time by the truck in the annex, keeping a low profile. The focus had to be on the vehicles, not me. I wanted to phone Elizabeth, firm up our meeting for Thursday night, but the show kept me running from before dawn until the early hours of the morning. By the time I got home I was exhausted, and it was too late to call anyway.

On Wednesday I got my father's permission to take the next morning off so I could tour the show at the Regal factory. First thing Thursday, I headed out to the trolley stop. The week had been cold, with highs in the teens, but this morning it was already near fifty. Mist rose from the ubiquitous piles of sooty snow to mottled gray clouds hanging low and heavy over the city, and trickles of snowmelt wended their way through cracks between the cobbles to storm sewers at the corners. I stopped at Wayne Gardens and dropped off my tuxedo for Society Night before taking a streetcar to the Regal factory.